1. Technical Field
The present technology relates generally to a marking apparatus and more specifically to a marker for use during surgery.
2. Introduction
The use of marking devices during surgery is common. Indeed, many surgical procedures require planning out incisions in skin, or other tissues. For example, often a surgeon will mark lines on a patient's body so as to know the proper place and length of the incision or incisions which will be made during the operation. Such lines can be particularly important in specialties such as plastic surgery where the operation is being conducted for cosmetic reasons. In these cases, it is extremely important that the incisions be made at the proper locations, and of the appropriate lengths. However, this is often difficult to do during surgery without the aid of markings.
Typically, a surgeon will use a felt tip pen to mark lines representing the desired incisions. However, surgical markers having felt tips lose their ability to write when they come into contact with fluid. Therefore, when the fluids that are used on the patient's body prior to surgery or when body fluids are exposed during the surgery come into contact with a marker's tip, the fluid impedes the marker's ability to make effective markings. Also, when marking surfaces within a wound, i.e. bone exposed after making an incision, fluid is nearly always present and detrimental to the marker's ability to mark.
Surgeons prefer to use a marker that is easy to hold and write with. Unfortunately, as explained above, current disposable markers have an incredibly poor ability to write once their tip gets wet and, after each time a marker is rendered ineffective through fluid contact, surgeons do not want to have to sterilize a new marker or open another pre-sterilized marker package. Accordingly, some surgeons rely on primitive marking techniques.